


Athazagoraphobia

by urcool91



Series: Anderson Files [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, F/M, Fear, Heaps of Anderson Angst, Horror, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urcool91/pseuds/urcool91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts as a pool of acid sitting in his stomach. </p><p>Athazagoraphobia: the fear of being forgotten or replaced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Athazagoraphobia

It starts as a pool of acid sitting in his gut, eating away at the tissue painfully. He tries to ignore it, tries to control it, but he can physically feel himself slipping. Then comes the fall, gut-wrenching, inevitable, as he watches himself fade from their memories and be replaced by other, better men who deserve to be part of humanity far more than he does. Rock bottom is reached. He licks his wounds, sees another to attach to like the leech he is, and waits to be forgotten and replaced again. Rinse. Repeat.

 

Anderson's life has been like this for as long as he can remember. One of his first memories is the slamming doors, the shouting, the car starting and him running out to see his dad drive away for the last time. For a while they managed to keep in touch, but eventually his dad remarried and got another kid, a girl better and older than him. Anderson knows when to step aside.

 

Or in primary school, when his "best friend forever" moved to the other side of London, an insurmountable obstacle at the time. That time John had  _promised_ to stay his best friend, and for a while they had played together almost every weekend. But eventually John started bringing this plane-obsessed ginger kid who followed him around like a puppy. Anderson hated the ginger with all the passion in his seven-year-old heart, but he knew that he'd never measure up. The play dates abruptly stopped.

 

It always seemed to go that way. Anderson would care about someone, but they'd find someone better or less stupid and he'd let them leave him behind. They were happier without him.

 

The final blow came when him mum developed Alzheimer's when he was at uni. She was young for the disease, only 59. It was the worst hing Anderson had ever had to experience as she slowly lost her memories and her mind. Near the end she didn't even recognize him. Anderson knew it was selfish to hate that so much when the disease had destroyed so many other, more important things, but that was what hurt the most. It was all the pain of repeated replacements and abandonments wrapped into one endless moment when she asked the nurse who he was.

 

From that point on he was different. The idea that his wife would leave him consumed him at night. The fear carried on into the day time, when he'd cling to her and to his job even as he watched them need him less and less. He knows that the pain of rejection is inevitable, and that is the root of his fear. You can be blissfully happy with the love of your life in the moonlight when you're so damn afraid of it being over too soon and her forgetting you.

 

When he finds out about the pilot and all the others he only clenches on tighter. The action is automatic, a reflex against the foregone conclusion. The acid in his gut is boiling upwards, making him want to puke. His wife shakes him off but doesn't leave the house. He grabs the first thing he can find for a life-raft in his sea of fear.

 

It isn't fair to Sally that she's that life-raft. No matter how seriously she takes their relationship, for him she is just a tool, a coping mechanism as his marriage careens off the cliff and he knows, he  _knows,_ fades from his wife's mind. The sex, the flirting, the bonding over the Freak-bashing, its all about control for him. He knows that, eventually, Sally will find a nice man and probably settle down, replacing him, forgetting or being embarrassed about their little secret. But at least for now, when all other areas from home to work are spiraling downward, crushing him in his crippling fear, he can choose the time and the bar they meet at, he can choose the liquor, he can make sure to leave his mark on her before she, too, forgets him and replaces him with what she really deserves. 


End file.
